Chef D’Honneur – Daniel Boulud, Restaurant Daniel
As Chef-Owner of some of the country's finest restaurants, author of numerous cookbooks and creator of kitchenware and gourmet products, Daniel Boulud's beginnings on his family’s farm near Lyon may seem a distant past. Yet that past, rooted in the rhythms of the seasons, produce fresh from the fields and fine home cooking have paved the road to Boulud's becoming one of America's leading culinary authorities.
After his nomination as best cooking apprentice in France, Daniel went on to train under the renowned Chefs who would become his mentors: Roger Vergé, Georges Blanc and Michel Guérard. Now, Boulud himself, serves as a mentor to the talented young cooks he has been working with here in the United States for almost twenty-five years.
Before making his way to the U.S., Daniel spent two years in Copenhagen working as a Chef in some of the city’s finest kitchens. Eager to come to America, Boulud landed in Washington, DC as the private chef to The European Commission. Soon after, he moved to New York City, which he has called home ever since. During his first years in New York, Daniel opened the Polo Lounge at The Westbury Hotel and later Le Régence at the Hotel Plaza Athenée. From 1986 to 1992, Daniel was Executive Chef at Le Cirque. During his tenure there, the restaurant was regularly one of the most highly rated in the country. In 1992, Daniel earned the James Beard award for “Best Chef of New York City.”
1993 was an important turning point for Boulud, the year in which he set out on his own to open his much-heralded restaurant DANIEL on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Here, his inspiration and the foundation on which he has built his career, remain the seasonal ingredients supplied by dedicated American purveyors. Not long after opening, DANIEL was rated “one of the ten best restaurants in the world” by the International Herald Tribune. Daniel himself was declared “Outstanding Chef of the Year” in 1994 by the James Beard Foundation, with the latter having already named him “Best Chef: New York City” in 1992. After five successful years, the chef-restaurateur relocated DANIEL to a grand new home, a Venetian renaissance inspired setting at Park Avenue and 65th Street. Since the restaurant’s re-opening, Daniel Boulud has also been named “Chef of the Year” by Bon Appétit Magazine, and the restaurant has received Gourmet Magazine’s “Top Table” award, a coveted four star rating form The New York Times as well as Wine Spectator’s “Grand Award” and New York City’s top ratings for cuisine, service and decor in the Zagat Survey.
In September 1998 Daniel Boulud opened Café Boulud, named for the gathering place his great grandparents tended on their farm outside Lyon at the turn of the century. The contemporary Café Boulud is a French-American restaurant with an international accent welcoming Manhattan’s café society to a spot with the cosmopolitan chic of a Parisian rendez-vous. The chef created his first restaurant outside of New York City when he launched another Café Boulud in 2003 at the legendary Brazilian Court Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. DB Bistro Moderne, which Daniel opened in 2001, serves his interpretation of updated bistro cooking rooted in French tradition. DB Bistro, the most casual and fast-paced of Boulud's Manhattan restaurants, is in the City Club Hotel on West 44th Street, just steps from Times Square.
More recently, Boulud created Daniel Boulud Brasserie. “The restaurant is reminiscent of beautiful places you've seen, but is like no place you've ever been,” explains Chef Daniel Boulud of his restaurant at the Wynn Resort and Country Club. A splendid waterfront setting sets the tone, at times Alpine lakeside auberge and at others, Mediterranean seaside resort. The menu abounds with the kind of straightforward cooking that Boulud calls “French comfort food” adapted to this modern rendition of a bustling French brasserie to the Las Vegas Strip.
Bar Boulud, Daniel’s causal bistro and wine bar opened January 2008 directly across from Manhattan’s Lincoln Center. In addition to a full bistro menu, it features the fine terrines and pâtés of famed Parisian charcutier, Gilles Verot. Much further a field in Beijing, will be Maison Boulud, a French fine dining restaurant coming to the “Legation Quarter” the stately former US embassy compound adjacent to Tiananmen Square. The latter is due open in late June 2008. Daniel Boulud and The Dinex Group have also recently formed a partnership in Vancouver where they have taken on the management of the renowned restaurant, Lumière. Adjacent to Lumière they will create a new DB Bistro Moderne as a sister restaurant to the one on New York’s West 44th Street. Both restaurant’s are under renovation and are due to open in October 2008.
The second season of the “After Hours with DANIEL” series launched in October 2007 on Mojo TV. After a first season made in eight different New York City restaurants, the second round unfolded on the Los Angeles culinary scene. A third season airing in March 2008 will feature restaurants in Miami and New Orleans. As the consummate chef, Daniel Boulud gives viewers a behind closed doors look at the late night dinners, by chefs and for chefs, that are a highlight of a city’s culinary life and introduces the colorful characters who make up this demimonde. The high definition TV series reveals where chefs go to unwind after a night behind the stove and uncovers the far out foods they crave and cook for each other.
Daniel’s other endeavors include Feast & Fêtes Catering and his “Daniel Boulud CONNOISSEUR” line of Caspian caviar and smoked Scottish salmon offered via direct mail on www.danielnyc.com.
While Daniel has received countless professional accolades, he is most proud of having been named “Outstanding Restaurateur” by the James Beard Foundation and Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur by the French government, both in 2006. The creativity, energy and personal attention apparent in Boulud’s restaurants and gourmet products are surpassed only by his generosity and sense of community. The Chef has served on the board of Citymeals-on-Wheels since 1999, tirelessly hosting galas and raising funds and awareness to support their efforts to prepare and deliver nutritious meals to homebound elderly New Yorkers. His efforts were recognized April 2007when he received the “Culinary Humanitarian” award presented to him at the United Nations.